Apple has already spent $6 billion on content for Apple TV and Cook has made it clear that Apple’s future is as a digital service provider focused on selling subscriptions to generate revenue. While that means more than just selling subscriptions for video streaming, video streaming is the largest market for subscription services. A library of content is the key to selling subscriptions on the video streaming part.
Cook could decide to go smaller with a Sony or even smaller with MGM. My bet is he decides to go big with a Disney or a Netflix before Bezos decides it is time to purchase one of them.
the FT article that was the original source for that 6B number doesn’t say exactly that. They spent 1B in 2018, 2B in ‘19, and are predicted to spend another 3B through 2020. That number is also contested by other industry insiders, so.. Either way, 6B over three years is table stakes. Netflix has been burning through >10B per year for the last few years, on top of their huge 3rd party library.
Again though, what in Apple‘s history makes you think they do splashy purchases? They really only have one which was Beats, and that seemed to be as much of an aquihire for Iovine as it was the brand. Their other big (and small) purchases are all technologies, I.E.: NeXT (natch), PA Semi, Quattro, AuthenTec, Anobit, Shazam, VocalIQ and Intel’s wireless division.
Apple could have bought both Netflix and Disney a few years back when they were both much cheaper, and didn’t. They didn’t buy Tesla, Owens Corning???, Fitbit, Netflix again, Toshiba, Japan Display, Hynix, TomTom, Nintendo, Sony, Netflix yet again, or a number of other companies that Business Insider, Forbes, Gene Munster, et al have been confidently telling us they’ll make a play for.
if I’m betting on unexpected acquisitions for the next few years I’m thinking Apple are going to pick up a health care company or two, and not just in the research field. Seriously, they‘re not buying Disney.
